The business world is all abuzz with Chris Anderson’s best seller, The Long Tail, but after a read I found myself thinking…
that the book’s primary premise was one of those treatises that sounded good on paper, but would never really mean much to the real world business. The usual suspects, such as Amazon, were rounded up and held out as examples of the long tail.
Now, how realistic is Amazon for the typical business?
The reason I bring any of this up is that while this book may sell well, the danger is that it gives business owners another reason to chase the new, new thing, when they should stay at work and refine a proven business strategy that works in their reality — and then try to make it work a little better.
I’m not opposed to new thinking. I just find that much of the new thinking comes from a desire to call the same thinking by a new name.
Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes went even further, knocking Anderson’s assumptions by using the actual examples cited in the book to demonstrate just the opposite of what is proposed.
“So maybe Mr Anderson really has unlocked the sort of new business rules the cover promises. I say we wait before ripping up any business plans,” Anderson argued.
What do you think?
Technorati tags: The Long Tail marketing marketing strategy business strategy
My jury is still out on this, too. But I find Anderson’s thesis provocative. If I understand him correctly, a dramatic shift in the means and nature of distribution (in this case, via the Web) translates into dramatic marketing changes. As a copywriter, I think it’s healthy to remember that marketing isn’t always about messaging or communications; it’s often (perhaps even more often) about prosaic issues such as distribution or pricing. To bring up the specter of Starbucks once again: I think a good argument could be made that the Starbucks brand is less about positioning statements and communications than it is about real estate, i.e., put ‘em everywhere. This is the kind of lesson that can help us dispel some of the more ethereal theories and root us back to earth.
I also just recently learned about this new theory. WikiPedia has an interesting article about this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
Mike
Anderson himself wrote an admirable rebuttal on his blog, thelongtail.com.
The problem with most of the critics is the assumption that long tail phenomena will replace blockbusters. The blockbusters remain valuable at the head of the tail, but in the long tail era, they’re of relatively less importance.
How many businesses can really tap into the long tail? Consider that in 1990, virtually none could effectively do so (though one could consider the turn-of-20th-century Sears catalog the first stab at it). Now, you have eBay, Amazon, search engines, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, Rhapsody, news search engines, and a voluminous list of entrants, where before you had none. Sounds pretty powerful to me.
It’s a topic of personal interest, and I wrote about in MediaPost a few weeks back; if you’re interested, it’s at http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=313 .
Check out “Day of the Long Tail”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xAA71Ssids
Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang!
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/
Even Anderson’s rebuttal rings of the kind of academic excercise of which this stuff comes from – nothing really changes but the names.
Wal-Mart’s got a big swinging tail too, but it’s simply a cow of another color.
I’m not even trying to knock Anderson’s work or the book, I just think the emperor has no tail.
If you haven’t read “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, don’t wait any longer. The book may scare you, as it turns supply and demand economics on its head and makes us look at the way we do business in a brand new way. But it should also excite you, as Long Tail economics opens a new window for both producers and consumers.
Like any new hypothesis, the book is generating controversy. For example, John Jantsch worries it will cause businesses to chase the next new thing and warn that we need to focus on what works.
I worry instead that businesses will ignore the Long Tail until it is too late. Of course, we need to continue to focus on the tried and true, but ignoring new ideas is akin to putting our heads in the sand. The point here isn’t that the Long Tail currently requires us to dump our strategies and create a brand new set. The point is that we need to pay attention to Anderson’s vision and to what that may mean to our business’s future.
Too much is being made of the data in Anderson’s book. I prefer to look at the Long Tail as a potential (possible) growing future state of business that may represent a substantial market share.
Those business’s that choose to ignore new ideas, end up having to catch up to their competitors every time new buying trends appear. I recommend that we instead prepare for new trends by reinventing ourselves regularly so that we are out in front of new trends.
If you haven’t read the book, here is a very brief synopsis.
Anderson is the editor in chief of Wired Magazine, who shows us “what happens when everything in the world becomes available to everyone.” He discusses the impact and shows us the economics of how the many millions of niches we businesses once ignored can now make up more opportunity for consumers and businesses.
These niches reside at the tail-end of “hits,” those products that sell to the masses. In today’s wired world, Anderson shows us that those tiny niches that we traditionally believe are insignificant sales and that cost too much to reach. My read says that this is a future trend we need to be ready for, because when Generation M arrives to buy from us, I believe they will want it their way.
In short, the new economics of The Long Tail cannot be ignored. This is a must read.
I’m surprised you take this wait and see stance John as the implications of the long tail is far greater in many ways for small business as opposed to companies like amazon. The success of your blog and podcast is exactly the premise of the long tail, and the opportunities for minipreneurs and niche businesses are incredible.